Archaeologists have unearthed the bottom half of a manual flush toilet that dates back 2,400 years in the Yueyang archaeological site in China’s Shaanxi province. Yueyang served as a capital city...
People in the past have a reputation for being dirty and unhygienic, but is this true? While many aspects of personal hygiene have evolved over the centuries, others have remained surprisingly...
What was life like in the Indus Valley Civilization? How could someone who lived so long ago teach us anything about how we should manage our lives today? The following is a historical fiction...
In 1775, the Scottish inventor Alexander Cumming was granted the first patent for the design of a flushing toilet. Although the Romans were known for their innovation in sanitation, which included...
The Medieval period is usually perceived as a time in Europe during which the greater part of the continent was in decline. In many aspects of Medieval society, the quality of life was inferior as...
Prior to the Romans, Greece was the only part of Europe to have had toilets. But by the peak of the Roman Empire in the 3rd century AD, the Romans had introduced sanitation to much of their domain,...
I have spent an awful lot of time in Roman sewers – enough to earn me the nickname Queen of Latrines from my friends. The Etruscans laid the first underground sewers in the city of Rome around 500 BC...